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Palestinians have nothing to offer Israel

Telegraph Editorial:

It may be doubted whether Ariel Sharon really wishes to embark on the "road map" towards a final settlement with the Palestinians. What is certain is that Mahmood Abbas's failure to control terrorism means that the Israeli prime minister's sincerity on this issue will not be put to the test.

Their summit in Jerusalem yesterday was, understandably, dominated by the question of security. In defiance of a ceasefire declared by the two sides in February, Islamic Jihad has recently launched attacks on targets in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and Israel proper. And on Monday, a young woman sent by the Fatah al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades to bomb a hospital in the Negev was intercepted at a Gaza Strip crossing point, explosives sewn into her underwear. Security camera footage of her trying to detonate the bomb and subsequent television interviews in which she declared, "I believe in death", have riveted Israeli viewers.

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Yasser Arafat connived with terrorism and was ultimately rejected as a serious negotiating partner. Mr Abbas may wish to stop it - on the strength of that wish he was received in the White House last month - but is too weak to do so. Elected with a large majority in January, he has neither rooted out corruption nor, saying he prefers co-option to confrontation, curbed the gunmen and bombers. Failure to deliver has enhanced the stock of Hamas, so much so that Mr Abbas has postponed indefinitely parliamentary elections originally scheduled for next month, for fear that Fatah might lose. All in all, he is proving a very disappointing successor to Arafat.

While he may be disappointing, he is not surprising. His only attempts to reign in the death cults has been to ask for promises which he is not prepared to hold them to. Since he is too weak to hold them to their illusory promises he has nothing to offer. If he and the PA were willing to work with Israel and the IDF together they could destroy the terrorist that are preventing them from having a Palestinian state. It seems clear that, for Abbas, a state without the death cults to threaten Israel is not something he has the political will to deliver. What this means is that the PA is engaging in sham negotiations in the vane hope that the US or the Euros will force Israel to accept the death clults along with the PA. That has been the delusion the Palestinians have lived with when they are not in their real fantasy world of believeing they can drive the Israelis into the sea.